Two other recommended articles about cowboy poetry appear in the
program of the Western Folklife Center's 25th National Cowboy Poetry
Gathering (2009), and are available on the Western Folklife Center's
web site:
"Cowboy Citizen Poet," by

Kim Stafford, the founding director of the Northwest Writing
Institute at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, and

Following are a few
starting places that are characteristic of the wide range of opinions
expressed in print and on the web, in a somewhat chronological order:

According to a
National Endowment For the Arts (NEA) case study ("The
Cowboy Poetry Gathering: Rounding Up the Dollars to Grow a Home on the
Range") written by Charlie Seemann, Executive Director of the Western
Folklife Center,
home of the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada: "Former Montana State Folklorist Mike Korn wrote the Gathering's
[1985] working Definition:

Cowboy poetry is
rhymed, metered verse written by someone who has lived a significant
portion of his or her life in Western North American cattle culture.
The verse reflects an intimate knowledge of that way of life, and the
community from which it maintains itself in tradition. Cowboy poetry
may or may not in fact be anonymous in authorship but must have
qualities, content, and style that permit it to be accepted into the
repertoire of the cultural community as reflecting that community's
aesthetics in style, form, and content. The structural style of cowboy
poetry has its antecedents in the ballad style of England and the
Appalachian South. It is similar to popular works of authors such as
Robert W. Service and Rudyard Kipling."

"All cowboy
poets live in the rural West. At the center of the tradition are
the men who spend the majority of their time horseback, keeping track
of grazing cattle and moving them to market. Many of today's poets are
ranch housewives, ranch owners, auctioneers, rodeo cowboys, dude
wranglers, and people that hold down eight-hour workaday jobs but
raise cattle on the side."

In about
1992, poet, song writer, singer,
and playwright Andy Wilkinson
wrote an article for Persimmon Hill that included his comments
and those of poet and musicianBuck Ramsey. Read the excerpt below, where
among other things, Wilkinson says "... though it seems out of the cowboy character, deciding who's in and who's out has generated not an
inconsiderable amount of acrimony..." Ramsey has some wise comments
that include "There is a tradition that has to be
protected from people like me."

In 1994, about ten
years after the first Elko gathering, John Dofflemyer, poet, rancher,
and editor of Dry Crik Review published the anthology Maverick
Western Verse, which he describes in the introduction as
"...poetry which has taken risks within the genre, which dares
new subject matter...these are the mavericks, the individualists, the
remnants of a pioneering breed dealing with a modern age of fast and
changing values." The book includes many poems in free
verse and other non-traditional styles.

"Despite the
proliferation of printed cowboy poetry, it is still essentially a
spoken art form. It is continuous with other preliterate traditions
stretching back to the ballad singer as oral historian and conveyer of
news. The poetic form of cowboy verse has traditionally been
basic--regular meter and simple rhyme scheme, a structure that
facilitates memorization and gives a formal aspect to recitation
without getting in the way of the story line."

He notes that the
poetry in the anthology is "well within the traditional
bounds" and that a minority of the poems "are adept
presentations using less-structured verse, irregular rhymes, and broken
meter; these free verse poems are included because they also tell good
stories."

In his essay
"Cowboy Poetry Then and Now" in the collection of essays
published in 2000,
Cowboy Poets and Cowboy Poetry,
David Stanley, professor of
English and director of the Environmental Studies program at Utah's Westminster
College writes about the
definition of Cowboy Poetry and comments on early non-Cowboy classic
writers:

"Cowboy Poetry
has over the years expanded rapidly in its use of available poetic
forms, subject matter, and technique, moving outward from its balladic
center to other fixed forms and, increasingly, to free verse.
And although the most-admired poets of the pre-World War II era,
Bruce
Kiskaddon and Curley Fletcher, were experienced riders and stock
handlers, ranching people have also embraced verse by non-cowboys—James Barton Adams,
Lawrence Chittenden, Charles
Badger Clark, E. A. Brininstool, and
Henry Herbert Knibbs—whose acquaintance with livestock and cattle
management was mostly secondhand."

Hal Cannon.
The article traces the history of the form, its "golden age," the
publication of cowboy poetry, and the current scene. It states, in part:

Cowboy poetry is a tradition of working ranch people writing,
reciting, publishing, and performing poetry that illuminates the
occupational life of herding cattle on horseback. It is most
prevalently written in traditional forms—rhyme and meter—with
structure inherited from the ballad tradition of Great Britain.
However, some of the finest of this contemporary poetry breaks all the
rules of the tradition. Cowboys are generally critical of the
inauthentic and put a high value on poetic craftsmanship, though the
values for appraising the poetry are quite different from modern,
academically-based poetics.

There are essays posted here at
CowboyPoetry.com that address rhyme and meter, performance, and more:

Poet, humorist, and popular emcee Andy Nelson
shares some useful insights about "going overtime" in
performances, in Get
Off!.

Sam
Jackson's article, "Writing Cowboy
Poetry," suggests it is easier to say what cowboy poetry is not,
and that the term itself is the root of some confusion. The
article has guidelines for writing rhymed poetry.

Spurrin' the Words, a Cowboy Poetry Project from the
Montana 4-H Center for Youth Development by Kirk Astroth, includes history,
addresses rhyme and meter, and more. An excerpt, "Learning
About Rhythm," is in a feature here..

In an article
about Buck Ramsey, Andy Wilkinson includes these comments from a
conversation with Ramsey:

We'd come to Wallace Stevens
on a winding trail, one started with my having asked Buck to distinguish
cowboy poetry from other kinds. Since poetry is itself not easily given to
definition, it wasn't a simple request. Neither was it an idle
request, nor an academic one; as the cowboy poetry movement has grown, so
too has the debate over what poetry and which poets belong to the cowboy
tribe, and the increasing popularity of cowboy poetry gatherings has
further narrowed the debate to the somewhat more practical question of
what and which should be cut from a herd already beginning to show signs
of overgrazing the available pasture. And, though it seems out of the cowboy character, deciding who's in and who's out has generated not an
inconsiderable amount of acrimony.

Buck hunched-up on his elbows and leaned forward in the wheelchair, his
face now lit by the high-tech glow of the illuminated instruments on the
van's dashboard, making his thoughtful expression otherworldly and
theatric. A few miles clicked by before he began to talk.

"The subject matter of cowboy poetry should, of course, be taken from
the cowboy life, and should be treated with an insider's perspective,
using lingo that proves that the writer is part of that life. And it should have meter and rhyme." He went on, "There's
no place in traditional cowboy poetry for free verse or blank verse,
because it has to be quickly picked up by the ear, and it shouldn't smell
of experiment."

I objected. Can't a cowboy write in blank verse, or free verse?
"Oh, well, yes," he said, "and it might be cowboy poetry,
but it wouldn't be traditional cowboy poetry. You see, it's like
cattle; there's pedigreed or pure stock, and there's hybrid stock, and
there's a place, and even a use, for both kinds. We just need to
distinguish between the two when we organize cowboy poetry gatherings."

Why is the distinction necessary, I asked? There was no hesitation
before he replied, quietly, "There is a tradition that has to be
protected from people like me." In the rear-view mirror, I
caught an evanescent smile. "The cowboy way has been lost for
the last couple of generations, and we're just now rediscovering it
through traditional cowboy poetry and songs. We're finding our voice
again, and the traditional forms give us an opportunity for reidentifying
with the cowboy calling." Then why, I persisted, is he willing
to use blank verse, or free verse, or experiment with archaic verse
structures and rhythms in his own poetry? "Because," the smile
was no longer faint, "the strength of the line is in the hybrid
stock."

He wrote:Jim
Thompson of CBSI radio in Spearfish, South Dakota, was the
inspiration for this poem. He asked what made poetry a cowboy poem (not his
exact wording). My opinion is: if you've had frozen spots on your face from
winter chores horseback, rope burns and broken bones, rode up on a ridge and
watched a bitch coyote teach her pups to hunt, sat your horse on a ridge at
sunrise and watch God's great creation come to life, ate dust trailing cows
from summer to winter pasture, fought prairie fires and drought while trying
to keep a herd producing, sweat the birthin' of your favorite mare and then
lost the colt, calved out sometimes in cold
and soakin' rain and always wonder at the miracle, (to name a few experiences)
then you can write cowboy poetry.

If not, then you can write
poetry about cowboys. There are excellent poets in both categories, and one
should not be rated above the other, but that is my idea of what makes the
difference. Therefore the poem.

Jeff Streeby
shared the definitions of "Cowboy" and "Western"
used by the Charley Russell Western Heritage Association:

Categories explained

Works identified as "Cowboy" material:

These must, in some form or
manner, celebrate the features of the Western lifestyle and the horse or
cattle ranch culture including, but not limited to, the following:

the work and the people
who perform it,

its hazards,

its values,

its traditional practices,

features of the landscape
wherein that lifestyle exists

the development and
history of that lifestyle in the trans-Mississippi West
from the date of the Texas Revolution.

These criteria do not exclude
exploration of the rich cultural exchange of traditions between the Mexican
ranching culture and its history, the Canadian ranching culture and its
history, nor comparisons between American, Mexican, Canadian, and other
ranching cultures which employ similar practices and skills, historic or
contemporary rodeo culture, nor the horse and cattle ranching culture as it
is practiced in Eastern States.

Works identified as "Western" material:

The above listed criteria are
intended to specifically exclude subject matter which primarily concerns
loggers, miners, fur trappers and traders, early explorers, row-crop
farmers, railroad workers, hide-hunters, and Civil War-era military
operations earned out by either the Union or Confederate regular armies as
they directly relate to the conflict between the States. These criteria
exclude subject matter which concerns Civil War-era activities carried out
by irregulars in the trans-Mississippi West. These criteria exclude subject
matter which primarily concerns Native American traditions, values,
practices, and military-style operations in the trans-Mississippi West from
date of first European contact onward. These criteria exclude subject matter
which concerns the Texas Revolution and trans-Mississippi migration. All
these subject matters will be identified as "Western."

Poet Bob
Schild commented in the preface to his book, Pure Bull -- Well
Organized:

Being myself creatively, socially, and emotionally involved, as a contributing
Cowboy Poet, has afforded me the opportunity to overhear and partake of the
usually friendly debates on the basic whys and wherefores of Cowboy Poetry --
What constitutes a cowboy and who has a license to authoritatively represent
the breed?

There are, in my opinion, no justifying requirements, no limits, no rules.
Cowboy poetry of today seldom bears the scent of chuck wagon grub or the dust
of a trail herd plodding from Brownsville, Texas to Browning, Montana, nor
does it describe the weary thud, thud of horses' hooves on prairie sod at the
close of a day's or week's long journey -- guided only by stars, mountain
ranges, or river drainages. We, for the most part, are observers whose
deepest roots may scarce touch upon a now faded past.

I appreciate you calling this question as it has followed poetry
sessions for as long as there has been Cowboy verse. What is cowboy poetry?
I look forward to hearing from the masters and sages of this art. I don't
believe that it is as rigid as some think. It is history painted through verse
and sound. It should be delivered or recited and not just read. It is visual
and active. It has evolved as an art form through the contributions of
many as did the art of cow wrangling that it emulates.

Some poets follow
the school of regular meter and rhyme and I feel this has a place however I tend to prefer a break from the routine, as the theme
of the poem may require, to add interest or emphasis to the message.Some people rope
with nylon, some sisal and some rawhide. This too was an evolution brought out by the different styles of the wranglers just as
Cowboy Poetry is an evolution of the many poets' styles.

I equate the rhyme and
meter of my poems with the hoof beats of my horse as we ride along. Sometime the traveling is smooth and familiar and the
hoof beat is steady. Often times we find ourselves in new ground and the
going is a little more deliberate and irregular. Sometimes we find ourselves a bit more daring and lay our ears back and haul it in. I feel
that this compares to the use of meter and rhyme. Each style has its
place and can be used to add interest to the verse or make the reader "hang on
for his life."

Whether you prefer
the "Old School" or tend to branch out on your own just remember to keep wordin'. Tell the tales, pass it along. If
things can't bend, they break and this is why things evolve. What is Cowboy
Poetry? It is the history of life, evolving!

One of the major goals, as I
understood it back in '85 when Hal [Cannon], Jim [Griffith] and their
able crew kicked off the first Gathering in Elko, it was to PRESERVE cowboy
poetry. Seems to me and to most of those I've talked to about it, that
we're losing sight of that goal. More and more I'm hearing poems on
themes only remotely or not at all related to anything a cowboy might
recognize. Also, more and more of it is being presented in free/open
verse form. We could expect to find free/open verse in cow country
about as often as we might find a cowpoke in an immaculate white hat,
wearing two pearl-handled six-guns, with a guitar slung over his back, ear-markin',
brandin' and cuttin' calves.

Perhaps one of the reasons we
are seeing more and more stuff being offered by people marginally familiar
with the "cowboy culture" is that there were a lot of aspiring
writer/poets who saw the popularity of cowboy poetry as an opportunity to
publish. But they may have been impatient with the laborious
discipline required to fit a meter scheme to a thought and maintain a
smooth-flowing rhyme scheme. So they researched "cowboy" and
wrote "cowboy stuff" and read it at the gatherings. By now
some have become "experts" on the subject. As such they are
often called upon to head up cowboy poetry work-shops. Since most have
a preference for free/open verse, they have the effect of slanting cowboy
poetry away from the traditional rhyme and meter that made it what it is and
more toward contemporary forms, especially free/open verse.

As for free/open verse forms
of poetry, it seems there are many who have a wrong impression of my
attitude toward it. I don't hate open verse, Lisa. I don't like bad
(clumsy, contrived, stuffy, pretentious) free/open verse or any other
writing. I like what I see as good verse, free/open or rhymed and
metered. I like to read the language used effectively, efficiently,
with power, humor, drama, pathos, or profundity in any form. I just
have trouble recognizing free verse as cowboy poetry. Much of the
free/open verse I see, especially that offered as cowboy poetry, is hard for
me to recognize as poetry at all. It seems fair to me that I should be
able to recognize poetry by its own merit. It should not be necessary
to lave it "POETRY" by the shape that the words make on the page,
absence or presence of punctuation and capitals, one word lines, its being
in a book with the word POETRY on it, its being read at a POETRY gathering,
or any other gimmick to alert the reader to its nature.

At many gatherings, while free
verse is being read, I strain my ears 'til they cramp trying to hear
something poetic in what's being offered. A glance at the rest of the
audience tells me I'm not alone. But apparently no one wants to be
seen as so un-learned, so insensitive, so county-crude as to not understand
it. So, like the people in the fable of "The Emperor's New
Clothes," and being the nice folk they are, they applaud.

In his Rhyming Dictionary,
Clement Wood avoids trying to give a concise definition of free verse by
just saying it is NOT, i.e., "metric or accent verse or prose" and
goes on to say, "Don't write prose, no matter how chopped into brief
lines, and think it free verse." He doesn't say how to tell the
difference.

So it appears that free verse
is whatever the writer says it is and we aren't expected to question it.

Trying to find a good,
universal definition of "poetry" is about as confusing as trying
to find one of free verse. I think my favorite was the one I found in The
American Heritage Dictionary, 3rd edition, of 1992. It went,
"Poetry -- the art and work of a poet." Aha! Now we're
getting at it. We'll look up "Poet." "Poet -- a
writer of poems."

Clears it right up, don't it?

And so, since I couldn't find
any clearer definition of poetry than that, I decided to just cut out
"cowboy poetry" and see what I could do with that. And I'll
try using what I think of as a fair, general definition of
"language." Language, here, is a selection of orally
generated sounds which have meaning by mutual agreement within a specific
group. So, to me, the term "cowboy poetry," by mutual
agreement within the most specific group, cowboys, is that poetry most
recognizable to cowboys is cowboy poetry. And I'd bet a bottle of Bud
that what they will recognize as cowboy poetry will be verse in rhyme and
meter of, for, about, or by cowboys, and cowboy concerns. This is
something for cowboys to say. Yuppies, regardless of how many books
they've read on the subject, or how many degrees they may hold in literature
or poetry appreciation, can't say it for them.

My concern here, and the
concern of most with whom I've discussed it, is that this apparent growing
trend to bastardize cowboy poetry into contemporary forms, especially
free/open verse, will detract from the simple, honest appeal that made it
the success we've seen. If it becomes indistinguishable in form and
content from contemporary stuff, I think the folks who flock to hear it now
will become as bored with it as with other poetry, regardless of the boots
and hats on the performers.

Before someone brings them up,
I've already heard the yuppie type buzz-phrases such as "broadening our
horizons" -- "freeing up our consciousness" -- "throwing
off the fretters of convention," etc., etc., that are supposed to
explain why we should accept this mutation. It's meaningless
drivel. I think the discipline required to stay with it and write in
good thyme and meter can only help our work.

I took the opportunity in Elko
to discuss this subject with as many as possible and I found that most feel
the way I do about it. Some don't want to say anything, apparently for
fear they'll not be asked to recite one place or another. (Apparently,
some feel this has already happened.) Others just don want to
"hurt anybody's feelings." Of course there are other reasons
also. But it seems to me we should speak up on this subject now.
We'll sure not help anything by just ignoring what's happening or hurt
anything by speaking. I think all those involved here are better folks
than that.

Why should poetry have to be
rhymed, metered verse to be considered "cowboy poetry?" And,
why should it have to be written for recitation only? And, why must it
be written by cowboys or ranchers? My opinion of each is, no--such
limitations are not necessary.

Free verse has a rhythm and flow to it just like rhymed verse; only it's not
obviously sing-songy. A publisher once told me that he didn't even
realize he was reading free verse until he finished the poem. The rhythm
and flow are just inherently there.

Cowboy poetry should be written by someone who knows first-hand about the
cowboy/ranching way of life. That person doesn't necessarily have to be
a cowboy or a rancher. Plenty of wives have written fine poetry.
My poetry is written from my memories growing up on a ranch; it's about what
the kids do on ranches. Does that mean my poetry does not count because
of my perspective?

Some poetry does not lend itself neatly to recitation. Sometimes poetry
has to be consumed privately and contemplatively to be truly appreciated.
Performance, in my opinion, should not be the absolute objective of cowboy
poetry.

"... I feel one must have
actually 'forked leather' and strung some wire to be called a REAL cowboy
poet! I'm always amazed at "Drug-Store" cowboys and "Wanta-bees."
There is certainly nothing wrong with them, but I never respected anyone in
any profession who didn't or hadn't practiced his trade! 'Course I've
been known to be opinionated. Not everyone had the first hand
knowledge of trailing cows like Judge Gough. I can rhyme for a dime
any time, but I sure ain't no 'cowboy poet' in the truest sense.
Authenticity has always been my game!"

Cowboy poetry is not "a
poem written by a real cowboy," as some claim. What makes a poem
into cowboy poetry is tied to the poem's subject matter rather than to its
author-though men (and women) who have lived the cowboy life admittedly have a
big advantage in writing such poetry.

Also, cowboy poetry is not only poetry written in simple rhyme schemes or in
even meters, though such styles are common to most cowboy poems. Cowboy
poetry probably tends to use a simple literary structure because the Cowboy is
the opposite of a professor of English literature. Whether the Cowboy is
from the old or the modern West, or from another country where cowboys roam, he is wise not from book-learning, but from keenly observing the real world
and from sitting at the feet of his parents and other role models.
Poetry about him therefore seems almost to belie its subject matter if it
adopts a modern free verse or other nontraditional format, though there are
excellent cowboy poems that do use such formats.

... A good working definition of cowboy poetry might thus be any poetry
that celebrates the unique lifestyle and character of the Cowboy.

What is cowboy poetry.
This is very much open to argument. That doggone Free Verse gets everywhere. I
prefer to think of it as a metered and rhythmic symphony which keeps alive the
character of the cowboy as we know it. A blend of humour and pathos, courage
and determination to do honour to a way of living. This love for the form
isn't just restricted to the American West. There are huge numbers of
international writers and readers who revel in riding with the wind in their
faces. Let us not be insular. Insularity begets narrow mindedness, and this
will inevitably affect the flow of that precious meter.

I think that, like several other writers
have done, at least at first glance, it might seem easier to address what
cowboy isn't.

First, I think it isn't an intellectual
exercise. That is to say, I think cowboy poetry is as a result of itsvery heritage - earthy. Of the earth. It is intimately bound up
in the experiences of living and doing. It is reflective to the extent
that it needs to be to assign meaning or to perceive beauty to life or to
reject evil. It doesn't wander far from the basics of life - laughter,
joy, work, sweat, love, fear, anger. It's very essence is emotive.

It grows out of the same heritage that
spawns jokes and limericks and legends and myths. I also write some bardic
poetry set in the late Renaissance and I note a commonality of themes and
concerns and earthiness that comes from being close to the common (or
real) man for whom food and shelter, clothes and family, struggle and
opportunity are also the foundation of the poetry.

It may wonder at the meanings underlying
our trip from birth to death. But, overall it is more bound up in the
doing than the analyzing. It recognizes that we are never really very far
from the basics, earth, water, fire and air, and all the creatures we
share and compete with for survival in this place.

It's heritage is the oral tradition. The
passing of the stories from mouth to mouth. It is rhymed, metered verse
that was so written for ease of memorization because the normal way of
communication was initially recitation.

But now much, no, most of the cowboy
poetry I experience is in the written form. None, or few, of these are
experienced verbally. Most are written. I own a number of volumes of
Cowboy Poetry. I learned "Reincarnation" by Wallace McRae by
memorizing it from a written form. In fact I have only heard it done by
someone else twice and, yet, I'm told it is one of the most frequently
recited cowboy poems. I have read it dozens of time. So, it is no longer a
strictly verbal form even though the advent of more reasonably priced CD's
and DVD's are helping and strengthening the verbal form.

I would add that I find it to also be
evolving in itsform of presentation. No longer can
we presume that cowboy poetry is recited much like a Bible verse from
memory. Many read their work or the poem and that is often as satisfying
as a recitation. I have heard marvelous poems from men and women who do
not have the "gift" of a great memory. I would hate to see their
work lost to my hearing because of that little fact.

Further, more and more often, I find it
being presented interpretively as a dramatic reading or a dramatic
performance trying to capture the feeling behind those words in those
verses. This too lends life to the words in the same way that a dozen
actors can give a dozen different and unique interpretations to the poet's
words.

It's no longer just a recital. It is a
feast for the eyes (printed page and dramatization) as well as the ears.
That's a good thing.

It's not just simple rhyme and
straightforward meter even though itsroots are
there.

The cowboy poets who have written
for a while often realize that their rhyme and meter have become very
standardized and they start seeking out other forms. Couplets.
Internal rhymes in a line of verse, etc. It evolves as the poet continues
on. Yet, even then, I find we all have rhymes and meters that fit us well
and that we tend to migrate back towards.

Free verse is a form that I have always
had difficulty comprehending as poetry. I am prone to suspect that it is
the refuge of the many that don't wish to struggle with form or meter or
rhyme and so they put down a series of seemingly meaningful, but often
disjointed thoughts. But, in fairness, there is some free verse that is
well written and readable.

But, this form to me seems more an
intellectual exercise even in the best of circumstances. That makes it
wander quite a ways from the earthy immediacy of what I perceive to be
cowboy poetry. Having said that, I can't say with assurance that it isn't
ever cowboy poetry. It just is seldom personally satisfying to me to read
or hear it. That's not sufficient cause to write it off.

The question of whether it should only be
written by ranchers and agriculturalist is one that I have discussed at
length in several of my poems and accompanying comments elsewhere on the
CowboyPoetry.com site. Suffice it to say, my answer is a resounding
"no."

Cowboy Poetry has not really lost its
way. It is evolving. But, we should remember the concept of
evolution assumes that within it are many false starts and dead ends. This
will undoubtedly be the case here. But, overall, its sense of
earthiness, of being close to what life is all about, of being able to
laugh at itself, of its sense of there being a
real "good" as well as a real "bad" in life and its
determination to try to always head up the trail in the direction of right
gives it a basic dynamic that will cause it to continue to grow and
spread. And dare I say, develop and change.

Cowboy poetry tells what cowboys and
cowgirls think, feel, believe, and do. It's about horses, and cattle,
and people, and how they get along--or don't.

It's about the people who take care of the cowboys and cowgirls--the
spouses, the bosses, the barbers, the sheriffs, musicians, and
blacksmiths--all the folks who make it possible for such folks as
cowboys and cowgirls to exist, and to do their jobs, and to live their
lives.

For the benefit of the young folks, in what I consider to be REAL cowboy
poetry, there's never any kissin' or cussin'.

There may be an occasional fist fight or even a gunfight, but usually it
doesn't amount to anything serious.

In my definition of cowboy poetry, the good guys win out over the bad
guys, people and animals both tend to have interesting and sometimes
quirky personalities, love conquers all, and death is not the final
answer.

In my book, if this is what you write, you're a cowboy poet.

Now, all of this pretty much ignores how ornery people can be--cowboys
and girls included--but unless the orneriness is thwarted, and good
mainatins her stature in the community, I figure I may as well be readin'
the daily news.

I
once met a man who claimed to be a former US Marine.He got away with that hoax until he started detailing his Marine
Corps boot camp experiences.He could only go so far before his story seriously lacked in
credibility.He did not
have the credentials. How could I tell for absolute sure?

“I
decided to just cut out “cowboy
poetry” and see what I could do with that.”….

He
goes on by using a fair definition of language and identifies how and by
whom cowboy poetry is recognized.He
bets that what cowboys will recognize as cowboy poetry will be “verse
in rhyme and meter of, for, about, or by cowboys, and cowboy concerns.”
He further indicates that “this
is for cowboys to say,”not for others to say it for them.To that I say; thank you Ray Lashley, for being real and honest.

Let me see if I can add some perspective, from my point of view.Let’s take for instance; A writer of occupational poetry such
as a “miner.”We might
call it “miner poetry.”What
might differentiate “miner poetry” from “logger poetry”?I submit that you would need a miner and a logger as opposed to a
meat cutter or an accountant in order to be able to authenticate and
absolutely define their different poetry.Others may recognize it, imitate it, comment upon it, criticize
it, or applaud it. Serious students of mining or logging and/or poetry
may write about it and even write poetry about it or like it.However, in the end, only real miners and loggers, those closely
associated, and/or those with significant miner or logger experience
along the way will have true miner or logger poetry credentials.So it is with cowboy poetry and poets.

That is not to say that meat cutters and/or accountants without
significant miner or logger experience could not enjoy the miners or
loggers poetry.They certainly
could and perhaps would write similar poems, or write of it or study it.Through this type of poetry they might be reminded of family or
friends or other people of interest to them with similar occupations in
the past or present.Or,
vicariously dream of another occupation or dream of the things future
relevant to miners, loggers and others.However for now, they would not be called “miner
poets” or “logger poets”
because they would, by language definition, lack the credentials.

In my mind, the controversy is not so much “What
is cowboy poetry,”
or “Who is a cowboy poet,”
that to me is clear enough. The question should be: how do you measure
the credibility of cowboy poets and who will acknowledge their
credentials?Now we have
come full circle and really, Ray
Lashley, you got it right for this question too….
“This is for cowboys to
say”!!

Paul
Harwitz offered this introduction to theme on his web site: "'Cowboy Poetry' is not just about cowboys, ranching,
and cattle-drives. And it's not all by or about men, or even all
written by real working cowboys and cowgirls. It also includes more
general Western themes."

While we do not
actively seek poetry about "What is Cowboy Poetry." these poems and others
have been posted: